This invention relates to a method for generating a stereoscopic image of a garment when the garment is put on an object such as a person or an animal by the computer graphics and also to a system for generating a stereoscopic image of a garment using such a method.
Conventionally, in the fashion business, there has been proposed a system for generating a simulated image in which a client tries a garment on by combining an image of the client and an image of the garment and allowing the monitoring of a virtual try-on state.
This virtual try-on system employs, for example, a method according to which a plurality of garments to be tried on are actually prepared and photographed to prepare images of the garments, and a try-on image is generated by combining a photographed image of a client and an image of the garment selected by the client by chroma key.
However, with this virtual try-on system, it is necessary to actually prepare garments to be tried on and to photograph the prepared garments to generate the images of the garments to be combined to generate the try-on images. Accordingly, a huge amount of time, labor and cost are required to prepare the images of a great variety of garments, making it difficult to sufficiently meet the market's demand. Further, since the garment images are stationary fixed images, if they are combined with the photographed images of the clients, the combined images strongly look like images obtained by pasting different images together and lack realities such as the state of deformation of the garment when being actually tried on and draping ability. Thus, this system is qualitatively insufficient to provide the monitoring of the virtual try-on state.
If a state where a garment is put on an object can be simulated in a virtual space of the computer graphics to thereby generate a stereoscopic image (three-dimensional image) of the garment, it is quite convenient in, for example, the fashion business, because a variety of try-on states can be monitored in a real manner. These try-on states may include those in which the client hold many poses, the one in which the client's figure has changed, and the one in which the garment is mended. By animating the image of the object having the garment on and simulating the change of the stereoscopic image of the garment according to the movement of the object, the try-on state can be expressed in an animated manner and fashion shows can be held in the virtual space. Further, patterns can be directly prepared using the stereoscopic image of the garment. If this garment stereoscopic image generating system is applied to, for example, the apparel or clothing industry, a system capable of performing a continuous operation from the selection of garment to the preparation of patterns and up to the preparation of garment parts can be built. Such a system is considered to have various applications having high convenience even only in the fashion business.
In recent years, images generated by the computer graphics are frequently used in the animation industry, movie industry and advertisement industry, providing creative images having high reality. In such industries, images simulating the state where the object is actually a garment in the virtual space of the computer graphics is quite useful.
However, as a technique for generating a stereoscopic image of a garment using the computer graphics, only an elemental technique is disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 8-44785 for generating a stereoscopic image of a garment. An image generating method for generating an image representing a stereoscopic shape of a garment put on an object such as a person or an animal in a realistic manner and a system for generating the stereoscopic image of the garment using such an image generating method have not yet been proposed.